One claim of moderate religion is that religion of various stripes addresses aspects of life that science cannot address (See Gould’s concept of non-overlapping magisteria. These claims are made as a way of leaving religion alone in the face of science’s advances, and attempting to stake out an area for religion in which it makes sense to employ religious principles and modes of inquiry in preference to scientific ones. But the claim is false.
At some point in human history, religion did make sense. People were largely unaware of how the universe worked, and religion gave them enough answers to carry on with their lives. In the face of a vacuum of explanation and understanding, religion was a sensible and practical solution (thus its success in the ancient world). However, as science has crept farther and farther into the domain of religion, religion has become impractical to believe. Science has answered questions better in fields long dominated by religion (astronomy is an undisputed example), and it has made possible things that religion could not. While religion gave people certain useful fictions (such as a mighty god who hates it when you eat certain types of meat that happen to be prone to deadly disease), as people came to understand what was really happening, useful fiction could be far better replaced by useful fact (shellfish, it turns out, is delicious and nutritioius, and only deadly under certain well-understood circumstances). Recently, religious explanations have been driven into the last shadows of the world, and Gould relegates them to “ultimate meaning and moral value”, leaving to science essentially all areas where they used to overlap. But science is not silent on ultimate meaning or moral value. Science gives more insight into both meaning and morality than does science.
Because empirical studies like the origins of humanity and the function of the brain are in the realm of science, human thought and instinct is also within the realm of science. Morality can be described in such terms, and the results of that description offer a better understanding of morality than does a prescription or a faculty from any flavor of God.
And because science explains the universe, and explains where we come from, to a more exact and coherent degree than religion ever has, it is both more reliable and more revealing about the ultimate meaning of life. Now, of course, religion says a whole lot about the meaning of life (please God/get to heaven/acheive Nirvana), but none of these things actually offer any more meaning than can be gleaned from science (you exist as the latest iteration of a repeating pattern that has survived because its atributes tend it towards survival; survive or don’t according to your pattern): we can ask why the universe exists as it does, and thus why we are the patterns we are, but so too can we ask why we should please God, why we should desire heaven or Nirvana, and questions are equally sensible. Science’s answer may be less comforting, but it is more reliable and thus more practical; because it tells us what we have reason and evidence to believe about our origins and purpose, as opposed to what we would really like to be the story of our origins and purpose, it is more useful.
It may be objected that, if morality is a social instinct, and a given theory of meaning makes us happier, shouldn’t we continue to believe that which will help us survive longer and be happier while we survive? Yes, and that belief is science. Beliefs that accurately map to the world we experience have consistently proven to improve our situation over time. Science has cured diseases, made life easier and more entertaining, and if we have still been dissatisfied, it has made pills that make us happy and have no negative side affects (far fewer, at least, than the average religion). Because science has revealed morality to be instinctive, it has at once both lent practical credibility to being a good person, and made the practice of morality subject to empirical review. Indeed, ignorance is only bliss temporarily; in the long run, accurate beliefs beat inaccurate ones, because they help to achieve our aims.
Mr. Gould and others are incorrect, science and religion do not occupy non-overlapping magisteria, and where they did, it was a result of the youth of science, and not of any special attribute of religion. Science is now well into every magisteria of religion, and does a better job within those fields.